Charging Costs: Home charging is significantly cheaper than public charging options.
Missing from this is the percentage of people that can charge at home. Younger generations may never be able to afford a home. Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.
> Missing from this is the percentage of people that can charge at home.
In the US[1], about 70% of homes are detached or attached single-family homes[2]. The vast majority of those will be able to support charging one or two cars at home. How to address the remaining 30% is definitely an issue worth discussing, but it's not an issue for the majority of people who live in the US. If we could get to 70% of cars to being EVs, that would be a huge dent in our emissions, still worth celebrating even if it doesn't work for absolutely everyone.
> Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.
What I've seen around here (Twin Cities, MN) is apartments just have some charging company put about 4~8 of their fast chargers in their parking lot. I would guess those companies pay the installation costs and charge the users directly, so the apartment owners don't have to deal with it at all.
[1] The article is about Europe, but I don't live there. Maybe someone else can find stats for Europe.
Garages aren't necessary for charging. There are outdoor car chargers that can mount on pole. It is a little harder to run the power to them but not that expensive.
Similar chargers would work for apartment complex parking lots. It would even be possible to put chargers on street parking.
The way I interpret it, if you don't have a dedicated exclusive access to a parking space, you don't really have at-home charging, because the exclusive access is what gets rid of the need to negotiate with other people for access to the charger.
BEVs used just for city driving need to be charged about once a week, so you just plug in when there's an opportunity. A basic 7kW charger is enough to charge full battery overnight.
There are a lot of houses near me without garages but with covered carports with space to park 1-2 cars. So, some percentage of those 30m without a garage would still be able to have at-home charging. No idea on what that percentage would be though.
Good find! Interesting data in that. I don't think a garage is a requirement to charging at home, but that's still a fair point and a lower number than I expected.
> Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.
Homeowners also have to eat the cost of installing a charger and paying for electricity.
I think you’re exaggerating the issue. Many people charge at apartments, rental houses, or work and it’s only becoming more common.
The claim that younger generations will never afford homes has also been extremely exaggerated. Millennial home ownership rates are actually quite high and growing, not far from previous generations. Houses are more expensive, but claiming entire generations won’t afford homes is just doomerism.
> Millennial home ownership rates are actually quite high and growing, not far from previous generations.
Incorrect. Millennial home ownership rates are 10-15% lower than previous generations. They are growing in absolute terms simply because millennials are reaching middle age and getting more accumulated wealth - but there has been and remains a gap. The gap widens for Gen Z.
It costs about $600 for a home EV charger and should cost around $800-1800 for installation, approximately $200 of material and 4-6 hrs of labor.
A single commercial three-phase EV charger in a multi-tenant building plus installation costs at least an order of magnitude more when you include the electrical switchgear, charger, larger wiring, permit, conduit, utility costs, et
> It costs about $600 for a home EV charger and should cost around $800-1800 for installation, approximately $200 of material and 4-6 hrs of labor.
Reasonably, I’d need a panel upgrade and an upgrade to the underground feed... for which, the lowest quotes I’ve received have been $10k+. (More than I paid for the entire car that I’ve been driving for the past 12 years.)
I think people get "install a home EV charger" mixed up with "install a fast home EV charger".
If your goal is to full-charge a multi-hundred-mile EV in 8 hours, then, yes, you're looking at a significant installation with a new circuit, maybe a new panel, and maybe a new main feed from your utility. This could cost as much as the car!
If your goal is to charge enough overnight to make up for 2x your average daily commute, then you're talking about a much smaller installation. It could potentially even be done with through an existing 120V, 12A wall outlet. Many plug-in hybrids and EVs come with a dinky wall charger like this, and they are enough 99% of the time. External DC fast charging can make up for the rest.
Everyone's needs are different, but I think too many people rush in and go too far with electrical upgrades.
Yeah, like you say, everyone's needs are difference, but from my vantage point, an EV isn't really workable for my household without a home Level 2 charger, which isn't really workable without a panel/feed upgrade for my house.
My comment should’ve been prefaced with “Assuming you have an existing 200A service,”
A new service drop and panel shouldn’t be $10k, but lots of residential electricians are greedy. 4/0 4/0 2/0 aluminum triplex cable isn’t that expensive but if they included directional boring instead of trenching, $10k makes more sense. A fully loaded resi panel with the correct AFCI and GFCI breakers is around $2500 or so. If you happen to live in MN or WI, I can give you a better quote.
You also don’t need to own a home to charge a car where you live.
I met an uber driver who drove a Tesla Model 3 and they charged at an apartment tower garage.
The best part for them was the landlord offered it for free, no electricity charge.
I also know someone who just ran an extension cord out to their parking spot in their apartment.
It really isn’t that hard to imagine a situation where street parking has overnight charging infrastructure. Streets where people live already have electricity running to all of them.
> It really isn’t that hard to imagine a situation where street parking has overnight charging infrastructure. Streets where people live already have electricity running to all of them.
I've read that while this is true, the power capacity of this existing infrastructure is far, far from what would be required. Even the cable sizes are frequently inappropriate.
Gasoline cars were sold before gas station networks existed. We didn’t always have a gas station around every corner.
The same argument about capacity could be made for other modern appliances like air conditioning and electric dryers.
Most EV buyers barely need level 2 charging for their daily average driving distance.
Of course if we are going to get deep in the weeds I’d say that most places where the majority of peope live including suburbs can be made far more conducive to cycling and transit without that much of an investment and more of a mindset change to how we approach city development.
Yep, when I go to my annual hoa meeting for my condo complex, it's all very old people that have absolutely no interest in paying a penny more. I even offered to pay the entire cost to have a charger put in for my parking spot but it was shot down over concerns of having to drop wiring out to it.
In the UK (and probably most of Europe) there is already regulation requiring new residential parking and garages to have a grid connection installed, to be able to easily add chargers at residents' request (even if they're renting).
Very true. I've seen some tech companies doing this in conjunction with adding roof solar to get tax breaks. Are other industries stepping up as well?
Of course in hind-sight I recall we had about 16 chargers at the time we had over 20k employees. There were a lot of Tesla's in the parking lot but many of those people were older and had homes. Those chargers also caused a lot of drama. People would unplug other peoples cars, the other people would send videos from their Tesla to corporate security. I would just park my old ICE truck near the front door since I got to work early.
In 2014 or 2015 I worked with a guy who wanted charging at the office. We didn't have it, so he just started running an extension cord from his car into the building. IIRC they got mad at him not for taking the electricity but because he was leaving the door ajar to do it.
Honestly, it's kind of blatantly transparent that corporate climate change initiatives are meaningless when they insist workers commute to the office when we just spent the last few years proving we would work from home. I'm thankful my employer still lets us WFH and it greatly helps our recruitment and retention.
Agreed. I assumed the push for EV's was to buy the US and EU time to refine their processes around CNG refinement, storage and transport and to avoid dependence on Saudi (for US)/Russian (for EU) oil. That's nearly a done deal in the US. CNG not far from me is $2.25/gallon. No idea how far along the EU is or if the plan is for the US to sell CNG to the EU.
All climate change initiatives that don't directly reduce either mass or reducing the distance the mass is moved are meaningless.
Which means, the only initiative for climate change that ever needed to happen is a higher and higher taxes on fossil fuels, and everything would flow downhill from that.
But that was never on the table, so it was always all just lip service.
> Which means, the only initiative for climate change that ever needed to happen is a higher and higher taxes on fossil fuels, and everything would flow downhill from that.
We effectively managed it in Canada, but it’s become political poison.
> Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.
Why not charge EV owners directly?
Also I’m not sure if chargers are that expensive in the first place, especially considering you don’t necessarily need fast charging since you leave your car charging overnight anyways.
I wonder what happens to the old homes. Are homes being razed on a massive scale? If the population almost doesn't grow anymore, and some houses are still being built, where the heck all those house disappear? Owners or renters, but SOMEONE has to be living there.
Tons of homes in the US are kept vacant, either because landlord( companie)s want higher rents that what's achievable by renters in the market, or because property is a reliable asset to hold that will increase value.
It doesn't work this way because vacant homes in some place decrease values and rents on ALL the homes in the same place, and it hits the pockets of everyone really hard.
The overall population isn't necessarily growing very much. But populations of the different areas throughout the country are pretty different from even a few decades ago. Many old towns (and old homes) are just no longer economically viable after the industries that gave people jobs in those towns moved away.
Lots of extremely cheap houses in certain places. Good luck getting decent city services or a well-paying job anywhere nearby.
So it's about concentration, not overall price growth? That's natural then - it also means incomes in those few places are much higher too that people are moving there. And yes they might have to endure hardships to do so.
I mean, in Europe however socialist, no one is asking for affordable housing on Avenue Foch. Affordable housing must exist, but by definition it can only exist in places where only people who live there are those who "remained", i.e. left out when all active ones are excluded.
This is _by far_ the biggest concern. I own a home, but it doesn't have a driveway much like the majority of Brits which means I rely on public charging for my EV.
In the UK, electricity supplied to your home is charged at a 5% rate of VAT. You can also take advantage of cheaper overnight energy tariffs that keep the price per kWh down to £0.03-0.05. Public chargers will charge a minimum of £0.55 up to £1 per kWh which includes 20% VAT.
Yep. I rent and for me that makes EVs not an option. I do see two people in my parking garage have plug in hybrids and charge from 120 volt outlets. I don't know if they actually have permission to use the outlets.
I know several people that charge their EV's from 120V outlets and do just fine. They planned on installing a faster charger, got an expensive quote for the installation so delayed and then just realized that 120V was good enough for them.
We got our first EV last month (2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5) and we are currently doing this. It is just barely feasible if you don't drive much (< ~30mi / day?) and are home quite a lot (at least 10 contiguous hours daily, i.e. overnight). This describes us, and honestly probably a fair number of people. It also works if you are willing to stop by a fast charger for 20 minutes once or twice a month to top it back up.
I was kind of expecting it to be more feasible, but after our experience, I think most people would be much happier with a L2 charger installed. We plan to have one installed once the weather warms up.
120v is normally about 1 mile of range per hour which isn't great but is OK if you don't have to drive much. I have a 40 mile round trip commute to work.
We get 7km an hour of charging in the summer time at 120V. It's lower in the winter as some of the power goes to keeping the battery warm. It's not completely lost, though -- starting out with a warm battery results in much greater range than starting with a cold battery in the winter.
For 14 months, I charged my 2023 Bolt EUV via the Chevy EVSE plugged into a wall outlet. I was getting about 2 miles of range per hour. There's a setting in the Bolt for a "home location" where you say you have a dedicated outlet and that increases the draw from 8A to 12A. That got me to 3 per hour.
We knew we were moving and I have a 240V EVSE at the current house. I found the 120V worked for me with very rare DC fast charging necessary, mostly when I visited a family member downstate. This, though, was a stage of my life where 2 kids were in college and the other had his own car. Much different than when they were on 3 different soccer teams, different schools, etc.
Unless you live in a very cold environment, or drive a very inefficient/large EV, a standard 120V outlet is good for 3 miles of range per hour. If you can find a 20A outlet, usually that jumps to 5-6mph due to less overall fixed charging overhead.
The charger that came with the car has a 120v 12A mode. That's ~1.4kW. Add some charging losses, at least 1.2kW probably makes it into the battery.
1.2 * 3.2 > 1.5.
Even a Lightning averages about 2mi/kWh.
The Mach E isn't even that impressive in efficiency.
They have a lot of added mechanical complexity, which makes them likely to have shorter lifespans than pure EVs, but they can be quite good in the right circumstances
Missing from this is the percentage of people that can charge at home. Younger generations may never be able to afford a home. Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.